Poll Data

Current poll data are brutal for the Democrats. In the Rasmussen survey, President Obama’s approval index, the difference between those who strongly approve and strongly disapprove of his performance, has hit a record low of -15. Overall, voters disapprove of Obama by 54-45%. That’s no doubt in part because voters have also turned decisively against the Democrats’ health care proposals, opposing them, currently, by 56-38%.
Meanwhile, voters now favor Republicans over Democrats by seven points on the generic ballot, 44-37%.Byron York examines the numbers behind Obama’s slumping Gallup rating and finds that Obama is now at 39% with whites and below 50% among all those who go to church. Pluralities of all of those who are over 29 years old or earn more than $2,000 a month disapprove of Obama’s performance. Looking at it positively, you could say that the President is still hanging tough with the pivotal young, poor, atheist voting bloc. Michael Barone, meanwhile, asks whether Democrats are beginning to desert their sinking ship.
Is that premature? Sure. But there is no doubt that if the 2010 election were held tomorrow, the Democrats would be slaughtered. What do they plan to do between now and November 2010 to turn that around? Jam an unpopular health care bill down the voters’ throats, enact a job-destroying tax on carbon that most people now believe is founded on a myth, and raise taxes. [UPDATE: I should have added, they’re also freeing Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four confederates into the federal court system–that’ll generate some helpful headlines over the next year–and now they’re also talking about bringing back “comprehensive immigration reform,” which prior to the Obama administration was the most unpopular thing Congress had done in a long time. It’s a perfect storm of legislative malpractice.] Beyond that, they are crossing their fingers and hoping that the extraordinary vigor of the American economy will survive all of the damage they have inflicted on it, and will rally by November.
That could happen, of course. But it seems like a rather poor bet.